Free Sadie-In-Waiting by Annie Jones Page A

didn’t come.
    For one brief shining moment, it flashed through her mind to just cut loose and send the plate and its slapped-down contents flying. She supposed when somebody asked her about it, she could just tell them, “Well, they say that you should throw pasta against the wall to see if it’s done. Turns out it was—and so was I.”
    She was. Done, that is.
    She settled Ed’s plate in front of his accustomed chair, then helped herself to two full mounds of the delicious-smelling concoction.
    The silverware by her own chair clanked as she rolled it up in the cloth napkin. She bent to blow out the candles, then turned to take her dinner upstairs to her room.
    Ed would show up before too long. Probably. Or Ryan. Or Olivia. Let one of them clear the table and wrap up the leftovers.
    And if they came tapping at her door, seeking her out to ask why she hadn’t waited for them, she knew just what she’d say. “You are healthy, able and intelligent human beings. You know how to operate a telephone, a wristwatch and a microwave oven. Why didn’t I wait on you? Maybe the question you should be asking is why don’t you ever wait on yourselves?”
     
    “You actually said that?”
    “Oh, of course not, Mary Tate. The Lord would never grant me the gift of being both that bold and that clever in the same breath.” Sadie clutched a box of cookies from theNot By Bread Alone Bakery and turned toward the park. “But I sure do wish I had said it.”
    “Someday you will. You have the fire in you, Sadie. I saw it the very first day we met.”
    “That must be why I love you so much, Mary Tate. You see fire in me where everyone else sees a nice comfy footstool.”
    “Well, maybe that’s because you only show them your footstool side, honey.”
    “I can’t help it.” Sadie glanced over her shoulder at her own backside. “It’s bigger than both of us.”
    “Oh, stop it. You still look good, girl.” Mary Tate bumped Sadie’s shoulder with her own. “But that’s a fine example. Making a joke about yourself, that’s the footstool Sadie talking.”
    “Maybe people see that because that’s all there is—did you ever think of that?” Sadie asked.
    “Thought of it and rejected it out of hand, thank you very much.” The wheels on the little red wagon Mary Tate had volunteered to bring to carry the cooler of soft drinks rattled and squawked. “Maybe it’s as simple as people not seeing what I do because they don’t bother to look—really look. That’s what friends are for, you know. To look beyond the flesh and the failings and see the you that God means for you to be.”
    Her friend’s words touched Sadie, but she covered up quickly to avoid getting blubbery. “Girl, you are cornier than forty acres of Iowa farmland, you know that?”
    “That doesn’t make what I said any less true.”
    They walked on toward the town park where Sadie had scheduled the first meeting of her presidential term for the Council of Christian Women. She had hoped for one of the members to volunteer a home, a workplace conference room, a church basement—at one point she’d have settledfor a centrally located tree house. When one by one the excuses rolled in, Sadie had to make a decision.
    Her house?
    She was a footstool, not a doormat.
    So she chose to hold an outdoor meeting on what Mary Tate dubbed “her turf.” And with the early-summer evening cooperating, she did not regret it one bit.
    Yet.
    “Oh, I forgot to tell you.” Mary Tate snatched at the sleeve of Sadie’s simple print dress. “I have gotten a ton of positive feedback about your daddy’s appearance with us in the Memorial Day parade.”
    “Me, too. How could anyone filled to the eyeballs with orneriness look so innocent and adorable wearing an army camouflage shirt, red pants, blue suspenders with silver stars and a foam Statue of Liberty hat?”
    “Got to admit it, sugar, the man has style. Just reeks of it.”
    “Yeah, well at least for now he’s reeking